Persistence Unlimited Personal Productivity Tips

How I Dropped A Whole Lot More Than 20 Pounds By Eating Chocolate Chip Pancakes…

Over a nice breakfast this morning, my kids were quizzing me about pancakes. 
I am by no means an expert because pancakes add little value to the outcome of my life.  But their questions reminded me of when I was a kid how I learned an important lesson about pancakes - of the chocolate [...]

links for 2008-05-29

Teacher lets Morningside students vote autistic classmate out of class, 5
1. School recommends student be tested for autism. 2. School organizes vote same child out of class before testing complete. What’s wrong with this picture? In tomorrow’s news, same teacher shows class how to kick walkers out from under the elderly…
(tags: school [...]

The Illusion of Difficulty Makes Task Management Hard

Have you ever had a task you were putting off and putting off until you just couldn’t stand it anymore.  Then finally, you start and it takes a whole 10 minutes to do? 

I’m sure we all can relate to this. 

Some tasks are great at creating the illusion of great difficulty.

• The task says “This is going to take forever.”
• The task says “You’re going to hate working on me.”
• The task says “There’s going to be lots of pain involved when you start.”
• The task says “Hope you are ready to be bored because a lot of boredom is coming your way.”

It’s easy to get faked out by tasks like this.  If you let enough time pass, you’ll start to believe what your mind is telling you about the task. 

But the best answer for tasks that speak such nonsense is action.  Action puts a lie to the task’s devious ways. 

• Action says “It’s actually not bad once you get started.”
• Action says “I am more motivated after I get started.”
• Action says “I was putting this off for nothing.”
• Action says “Automatically, I cross the finish line.”

Action requires one basic commitment - a commitment to start. 

Do something, ANYTHING to get started.  Start by cracking open a book, plugging in a cable, unloading one dish from the dishwasher.  All you need do is start, then like magic, action takes over. 

But first you must start.

So…

Start — > NOW!